Hi all,

I hope you’re busy working on your competition entries. I’m very much looking forward to reading them.

Although your in-class study has ended it’s great to see some schools continuing to develop their understanding and responses to poems studied.

Hanover  produced this stunning visual response to the poem “In Flanders Fields“… (click on the images to enlarge)

It was a week of experimentation as many of you tried blackout poetry.

Suad from Grafton clearly selected carefully to create this cohesive poem:

aching eyes
to you from failing hands we throw the torch,
reaching landings and turning corners.
The night darkening and the storm fast descending,
yet nothing can move!

Scarlet from Rotherfield made interesting selections to and weaved them together using well-judged line breaks:

Water
By the schoolyard ,a day in
June
And all the children
Laughed in the summer heat.
They head,
Shaming laughter
But what they saw was only
, far distant forests,
In Flander field
We lived,
In Flander field
We shall not sleep
In Flander field
No crystals
No carpet
And
No light
Its kinder hard
Life for me
A tyrant spell bound me
I cannot go
Beyond

While Jorden from Rotherfield changed the tone of the original poems through his selections in order to make it comic:

a red wheel barrow
saw a dancing bear
they watched it march they watched it halt.
“Now roly – poly somersault!”

Conversely, Angel from Rotherfield selected extracts to create a mysterious tone with the intention of making the reader want to know more:

rain water
by the schoolyard,
whistle-pipe, and played a tune.
Its head
summer heat.
they heard the
bear with burning coat of fur,
they paid a penny
aching eyes,
the poppies blow
mark our place;
the guns are dead.
short days sunset glow,
loved ones were loved,
the torch;
hold it
though
boards torn up,
all the time
and reachin’ landin’s
set down
still climin’
crystal spell
cannot.
bending
i cannot go.
cannot go.

Ema from Pakeman used the Bronte poem’s refrain to structure their own vivid poem:

Dear all,

Thank you for your responses to Langston Hughes. It seemed to be a poem that many of you enjoyed. Sila from Grafton explains her enjoyment in an interesting way:

i like this weeks poem it is really getting my brain working a lot

Some of the many highlights this week included:

Many of you were able to draw links between this poem and other poems or works you’ve studied. Nutaya from Rotherfield made this insightful observation linking “Mother to Son” with “In Flanders Fields”:

This poem is a inspirational poem for people with a Caribbean heritage. I think that this poem was created by a Jamaican woman who was treated badly and was telling her son what he might face in the future . This poem is like Flanders fields ,the author takes what was a big problem and creates a poem for future people to read

While Jack from Rotherfield linked the poem with a song:

I like this poem because it reminds me about black history and a song a change is gone a come by Sam Cook….

You can see the song below. How is it similar or different from Langston Hughes’ poem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOYuhLNwh3A

A number of Grafton pupils experimented with similes based on the concept “Life is like…”. Lee from Grafton created an enigmatic simile

life is like a piece of string you never know when it will end.

While Rodney from Grafton, like Hughes, focuses on the choices life provides:

Life is like chess there is always dilemma.

While Anoushka from Grafton, like many other students, takes an initial simile and starts to extend it:

I absolutely loved the new poem so I made some of my own little phrases based on poem.
life is like a maze that always has a way out so never be afraid of what lies ahead
Life is like a puzzle there is always a missing piece

Clay from Pakeman (?) extends his writing further and uses line breaks and a range of vocabulary to capture the variety of life:

Life is Hard

Life is like the sky
Blueberry rain,
Cyan colour,
Marshmallow clouds,
Bees flying,
Scrumptious picnics,
Sparkly snow,
Fire in the house,
Smoke coming from chimneys,
That’s bad for our world,
The world cries,
That’s why the rain comes,
Right now someone dies,
Right now someone is born,
My life is easy,
My life is hard,
Its in the middle,
I’m sorry for my friend,
I wonder when he comes back,
He’s the best,
Come back,
Make my life shine

Charmaine Medina from Pakeman also extends her simile throughout her poem and uses questions at the end to involve the reader:

The Book Of Life

Life is like a book
The beginning of your story
Where all your dreams come true
Each page is a new light
Imagination heaven
New myths created
Page by page
Emotion and adventures
New characters enter your life
Relationships being built
Additions being added
Fairy tale worlds being seen
Long journeys across seas
Seeing goblins and witches
Running along
Singing a curseful song
Thinking what could go wrong
Coming to the end
Say goodbye to my friends
What happens next?
Happily ever after?
Or death?

As you know Hughes’ poem is powerful in part because of his creation of a speaker for his poem; the mother. Ruby and Perdie from Gillespie also create a voice to speak their poem. Which word in the final line tells us the most about their speaker?

Life ain’t no fairytale
There ain’t always a happy ending
The bad guys aren’t always punished
They sometimes come out on top
Wishes aren’t always granted and…
Dreams don’t always come true.
But I’m still here, reading
Hanging on to every chapter
Even though life for me ain’t been no fairytale

As always we had some helpful feedback from one pupil to another. Look at how Selma from Gillespie encourages Mily but also explains clearly what she enjoys:

great poem mily you put lots of effort into it, also you put lots of thought to it i loved it my favorite part was when you wrote
life is like a flower its very delicate but never lasts forever.keep up the hard work mily i think this poem was fantastic.

Within the Your Poems section we saw some of you experimenting with your own themes and style. This is encouraging and good preparation for the competition which will start soon. Caitlin from Duncombe was inspired by Diwali and uses the contrast between dark and light brilliantly.

Dear all,

Thank you for your thoughts and poetry inspired by John McCrae‘s “In Flanders Fields“.

Some of this week’s highlights include:

Many of you considered how the poem made you feel. Martin M from Rotherfield provided this reflective account:

Flanders fields makes me feel melancholy and confused because I do not like people or soldiers who saved us in the war die. Also I did not understand the poem at first but when we studied it I understood it very well.

while Martin V from Rotherfield realised a poem could create two opposing feelings in readers at once and used quotes to support his point:

In flanders fields I felt really disgusted, also really greatful because they saved our country and we all have freedom.I feel disgusted because lots of people died and makes me realize that lots of families are extremely depressed!!!The sentence what made me fell disgusted was: ‘In flanders fields poppies blow between the crosses,row on row’

Aicha from Rotherfield realised the poem made them pause and how it still seemed relevant today:

Dear all,

Thank you once again for your hard work last week. I’m glad you enjoyed Causley’s poem “My Mother saw a Dancing Bear”. It seemed to stir up strong feelings. There were some fantastic poems shared last week. Some special mentions to:

Selma (Remember to name your school in your posts) captured the tone of the Causley poem with her own ending:

They paid a penny for the dance
But what they saw was desperate sadness
With grey eyes like a hurricane in motion
And a pool of mournful melancholy

Henry Brett uses alliteration to enforce the sorrowful tone of the poem in his third line:

They paid a penny for the dance
But what they saw was a depresses scared
bear with bloodshot eyes
Starving to death begging for some food

Marcel of Duncombe showed creativity by considering what would happen if we changed the voice of the poem and ended with a first person speaker:

Ella of Gillespie led the debate on the issue of using bears for entertainment. Look at how she develops her argument in detail:

I’m against such an idea of training bears as it is not like training a dog or cat as they are bred by humans. Bears are naturally scared of humans and when I went to Canada a girl I met was chased by a bear because it was brought up near humans so it wasn’t afraid of them and it usually would run away so it would have been a bad idea to train it and it would be capable of more power. It is also unfair on the bear as it could not run away because it wouldn’t know how to feed itself and take care of himself. You may think that it looked like it was enjoying itself but it was just being trained to do that and I strongly disagree.

Sometimes we don’t have answers but further questions. It’s encouraging to see Mustafa still considering:

I want to ask you a question : why do you think the author wrote the poem as a story first?

Can you answer his question?

I hope you enjoy “In Flanders Fields”. You’ve got 2 more poems after Week 3 and then you’ll work on your own entry for the poetry competition. Could you be the next FutureZone Poet Laureate?

Check out the previous winners and see what techniques they used to be successful. Toby Kaye  reviewed last year’s winner Aaina Siddique from Duncombe School and commented:

“Their eyes met” was really nice because you used one syllable for each line.

Keep up the hard work.

Michael.

What a great start to the first  week. Thank you for sharing your ideas so far.

Some special mentions:

A big thank you to Duncombe for being our first school to share and post work on the blog. Duncombe shared a range of poems based on William Carlos William’s poem. Some of my favourites include:

We also had this wonderful efforts from Megan and Tommy from Rotherfield:

Welcome to the sixth FutureZone Poetry Course.

You will be studying a poem a week for 5 weeks in class and sharing your ideas and thoughts on this blog with one another.

At the end of the course you will be able to enter a poetry competition. Every pupil who enters will have their work published.

Each school will have its own Poet of the Year while one student will become the FutureZone poet Laureate of the Year.

Click on the Poet Laureate tab to see previous winners.